Coming of Age

We want to wish you a happy Father's Day. We're glad that you're here. If you're online with us again, happy Father's Day. To those of you that are at home, Father's Day is one of those things that I think something similar happens in homes all across America. Like, we find these cheap T shirts, hats, mugs, whatever, we can give to our dads that say something along the lines of world's greatest dad or some similar expression.

I can remember being a kid and. And seeing, like, all my friends, like, give the same gifts to their dad that I was giving to my dad and wondering, what would it look like if all of our world's greatest dads kind of got on the playground and tried to fight it out to see who actually was the world's greatest dad? But the older I get, I'll be 47 this year. I realize that that wouldn't be a very fun thing to watch, you know, a bunch of dad bods going at it on the playground. In the last week, Audrey and I were at Walmart, my wife and I were at Walmart, and I found this shirt that expresses a very similar sentiment.

It'll come, I promise. I think. Is it going to show up? Yes. The world's greatest father, except we had to cross out father.

Here's something that excited me in the moment, is that when my wife saw the shirt and drew my attention to it, she did not say that I needed the shirt. She said that her father needed the shirt. And I was really excited in the moment. But the more we walked through the store, I didn't know if I should feel insulted like that. I couldn't receive the distinguished honor of wearing that shirt.

Regardless of what you have experienced with your father, whether your father was a great father, whether your father was a good father, whether your father hurt you in ways that have impacted your life or even if you grieve. This Father's Day, I am certain that all of us probably have formed in our minds some formula for what it really looks like to be a great. A great dad? I wanted to give you my short list of what it looks like to be a great dad. And I'll tell you where that shortlist came from.

It came from my observations of godly men I know and how they've been a dad. And then it comes. Ultimately, it's informed by scripture and what I see God speak to and the examples that we see there. And so here's my short list for what it looks like to be a great dad. A great dad isn't perfect.

If you are waiting for your dad to be perfect, you're going to be waiting a really long time. Because our dads, all of us, no matter how good they are, we're broken. We make mistakes. We say things that we regret. And so great dads aren't perfect, but great dads are faithful.

Great dads are present. Great dads have a way of being present for the most significant things. And notice I didn't say everything, but great dads have a way of being present for the significant things. And when they're not, great dads know how to say I'm sorry. Great dads know how to be, how to sacrifice.

They know what it means to give up for those they love the most. Great dads know how to make us smile. Great dads know how to say just the right thing. Or maybe what our wives would say are the inappropriate things at just the right moment. Or maybe they would say the wrong moment to bring a smile to our faces.

Come on, we have a whole genre of humor for ourselves. Dad jokes, right? How many of you like a good dad joke? Be honest. What?

If you really like a good dad joke, raise your hand. Now, I want you to look around the room and I want you to see that there are probably more men's hands raised than there are women's hands raised. Alright? But can I just plead with you for a moment? If you don't like dad jokes, can you just understand that, that we can't help it?

Like, they just come and they come at inconvenient times. Here's an example. May 4th, we're in a teaching series. Matt Giebler is up here preaching. He's a big Star wars fan and he's sharing all about Star wars stuff.

And I'm sitting here in the front row and I'm trying to take good sermon notes and all I could think of was a fun dad joke. And so I wrote it down, I shared it with my boys, I texted it to them, and here it is. Incredible. I'm going to warn you.

What do you call Darth Maul's parents? Daughter, his sister.

I told you, you can't help it. I was in a young adult group here just a couple Sundays ago. Down the hall we have a young adults group that meets at, at 9:30am and, and we were talking about something and somebody shared a story. And again, like I'm journaling notes to this lesson that's being taught and like I just can't help came and I thought you Know what? What do you call it when the Asian restaurant runs out of food, they hit walk bottom.

See, it's just. And I just want to tell you that, like, if you have a guy in your life and he tells dad jokes, they can't help it. They just come. But I do know that dads often make us smile. And here's the last thing I wrote down, is that great dads know how to give good gifts.

And I want you to be intentional about what I said. I didn't say great dads give expensive gifts or great dads give us everything that we want. But great dads know how to give a good gift at the right time. And can I just encourage you, if you're a dad in the room or you're watching online, that the greatest gift you can ever give to your children is your own intentional pursuit of Jesus. Your pursuit of Jesus will transform you into the man that your kids need in every season of their life.

And it will leave a legacy that outlasts any inheritance, any accomplishment, and any award you could ever receive in this world. And so pursue Jesus.

When I think about the hundreds of thousands of shirts and mugs and hats and cards that say World's Greatest Dad, I can't help but think that ultimately none of us should wear those things. Because if we're honest, there's only been one greatest dad, and that is our Heavenly Father, who made us and created us and crafted us in his image. Unlike us, he is perfect in every way. He is present in every situation. He knows what sacrifice is, and he willingly does it for us.

He knows how to make us smile. I think about the words from the Old Testament that the joy of the Lord is our strength and our God, our Heavenly Father, the world's greatest dad has given us the absolute greatest gift that anyone could ever give. He gave his one and only Son to come and to live in this world broken by sin, knowing that we were separated from him because of our sin. And he sent His Son to live and to die and to rise again so that all of us who believe in him could find life, full life, overflowing life, incredible life, life full of meaning and purpose and hope and joy by. By trusting and believing in Him.

It's the greatest gift any of us could receive. And in our series right now on Galatians, we just keep circling this same point that the good news, the great news, the Gospel, as we would call it, is Jesus plus nothing else. Jesus is the greatest gift. And Jesus gives us the life that we desperately crave that we're hardwired for that we desire at every level and in every situation. Jesus is the answer.

I know we tease people about Jesus being the answer in church, but the point of Paul and Galatians is that Jesus is the answer like it's Jesus and nothing else. We're going to continue looking at Galatians today here. In a little bit we'll be in Galatians chapter three, starting in verse 15. And so if you want to find that in your Bibles, on your phone or your hard copy will be ready.

When I think about Paul's letter to the Galatians, there's something I kind of want to get out of the way. I know that if you're new to exploring faith, if you simply count yourself among the curious, but you're still somewhat of a skeptic that the idea that we could learn something from words that were penned in the mid first century A.D. likely somewhere between 45 A.D. and 55 A.D. i mean that's like 1970 some years ago, that somehow they could be relevant for our lives.

I know that that is a hard sell, but I'd encourage you to do, if you find yourself curious, just to listen in. Because God has a way through the truth that he has preserved in his word of taking what would seem to be a time bound message and communicating timeless truth. Because you'd be right that Paul originally wrote to a specific people in a specific place at a specific time. But there's a reason why God has seen to it that these ancient words, once penned in Greek, are now translated in English and being spoken from our platform we after week after week. And that's because the same God who is at work in these words is the same God who's still at work in our world.

Hebrews tells us that he's the same yesterday, today and forever. Paul led us in a song singing this morning that he's the same God.

And because of that, the truths that are communicated to the Galatians are truths that can resonate with us and for us with just a little bit of work. So we're going to do that work today. When Paul writes Galatians, if you don't know the backstory, Paul is a zealous man. Prior to us knowing him as Paul, Paul was known as Saul. And Saul was a zealous Jew.

He was a Jewish leader. Like he was passionate about keeping the Old Testament law. These words that were given to Moses, the commands given to Moses, so some 613 of them. And he was Passionate, not only about those 613, but something called the Oral Torah that kind of was the various ways that that was applied. Like, Paul was an expert.

He was zealous for the Jewish way. And when he met Jesus, something changed in him. And he went from persecutor to preacher, and he committed his life as God, sent him out to tell everybody about how incredible Jesus was. And so on that journey, Paul comes to this region of Galatia, and he goes to various cities and he tells them about Jesus. He's speaking primarily to people who have no clue about his history, no clue about what it meant to be Jewish, what God had done through Abraham or Moses or David.

And so he's teaching them about Jesus. And they come to believe, and their lives were changed. They recognized that the ways that they'd been living for themselves and for the Roman culture of the day, it didn't add up, it didn't fulfill. And so they found themselves in Jesus and they believed in him. So Paul had done his work, and Paul moves on to other cities and shares the Gospel.

Jesus plus nothing in those other cities. Well, in his absence, a group of Jewish Christians, they too had accepted Jesus. They too had said, I believe that Jesus is God's chosen Messiah. But yet they still wanted to hold on to their rigorous adherence and observance of the Old Testament law. And so instead of saying it was Jesus plus nothing, they said, it's Jesus plus strict observance of the law.

And for them, the observance of the law kind of superseded just trusting in Jesus. And so they come into this church, and in Paul's absence, they start telling all these people who have no idea about the Jewish history all the reasons why they should hold on to the law and to Jesus. And Paul gets wind of it, and he's like, no, you're missing the point. Like, no one could ever find life by obeying all of the commands of God to Moses. No one could ever find life that way.

You just need Jesus. And so he builds this compelling argument, this compelling defense that we call Galatians. And if you've been with us on the journey, it probably feels at times like we're just saying the same thing in different ways. And that's because we are. Because Paul repeats the message again and again and again in Galatians that it's Jesus plus nothing.

Freedom is found in Christ. Life is found in Jesus. I was talking to a friend on Monday. We were scheduled to have a phone call later in the day, and he said he might not be Able to make the phone call. We were going to still try for it, but he informs me through text that he is currently circling the Nashville airport.

Just circling. I don't know if you've ever been caught in one of those plane flights where, like, you can see the Runway, like, you know, where you're supposed to land, but the plane just keeps circling. And as you. As you do so, you kind of get to view the city from all kinds of different angles. And that's what Paul's doing in Galatians is he's taking us on a tour of a bunch of different parts of the same thing, that it's Jesus plus nothing.

Think of it this way. If. If you think of the last time you really wanted to convince somebody of something that was really important to you, maybe you wanted to convince someone that you needed to buy something. Dads, I'll pick on us for a minute. I know that we have a way often of finding the most expensive things that we think will be a great benefit to our family and to everyone around us, right?

And so we find the new pellet smoker, we find the new grill, we find the new griddle, we find the new car. We have a reason why this will benefit everyone. And if we're honest, we often will do a lot of investigation, and we'll have an argument built, won't we? And so when we. We come before whoever, you know, is making these decisions with us, we tell them that we really need this.

You give them one reason, but then you kind of turn it over. You're like, well, you know, if that didn't convince you, like, here's another reason why we need it. And if that wasn't enough, we come like this. This is why we need it. If you think about your.

Your children when they. When they find something that they really want. Just a couple weeks ago, Nintendo Switch 2 released. And I'm guessing that there are families in this room where you've had a kid come to you and tell you all the reasons why their life would be better and they would have meaning and they would be somebody if they would just get the new video game system. And they probably came at it from different angles.

Well, you know, we can really play it as a family. Well, you know, dad will stay up late playing it. Well, you know, we've been looking for meaningful time together. And you know how you get on to me all the time for being on my phone. Guess what?

I won't be on my phone anymore. Like, there's. You see, it's Just the different angles. That's what Paul does in Galatians. He's.

He's attacking the same thing from different angles. He knows that the Gentile believers have been impressed with this burdensome teaching from the Jewish Christians that they need the law and Jesus. And he says, no. And so he starts in chapters one and two, and he says, let me tell you from my personal story why this isn't going to work. And then chapters three and four, he turns to more of what I would call a theological argument.

Keep in mind these Jewish Christians have reached into their Jewish history and said, these are all the reasons why you need to obey the law. And Paul says, tell you what, Let me reach back into that same story and tell you what God really meant. Last week, John Veach, our outreach minister, took us on a journey about how Abraham was saved by faith and God credited to him as righteousness. This week, we're going to move into Galatians 3. 15.

Instead of looking at faith, we're going to look at this promise that God made. A promise that once again helps us see that it really is all about Jesus and not adding anything else to the Gospel. So let me take you on this journey. Galatians chapter 3. 3.

We'll start at verse 15. And by the way, I hope that you'll see in this that this passage gives us the opportunity to experience what I would call the Father Heart of God. It helps us experience how much God loves us as the world's greatest dad. So here's Galatians chapter 3, beginning in verse 15, says, Dear brothers and sisters, here's an example from everyday life. And I just want to pause there for a moment.

Sometimes we read through Paul's letters and we hear language like brother and sister. And it can just kind of feel weird to us. But if we would just move beyond that a little bit and see that Paul's addressing these people like family, like he cares for them. He. He cares deeply for them.

So when Paul writes them, he's saying, I love you, like dear brothers and sisters. Like, here's an example from everyday life. You can just see him kind of fighting for the right thing to convince them that the gospel he gave them was enough. And so he reaches into life. He's like, let me tell you this story that comes from life.

Just as no one can set aside or amend an irrevocable agreement, so it is in this case. Paul reaches into their world. He looks into the. They would make these agreements, some might call them a covenant, where they would promise something and they would sign their name and it could not be changed. He said, I want you to be thinking of that because this is what God has done.

Verse 16, God gave the promises to Abraham and his child. And then he clarifies for emphasis. And notice that the scripture doesn't say to his children as if it meant many descendants. Rather it says to his child. That's one he says, that of course means Christ.

So, so Paul reaches back into their story, these men and women, young and old, who've heard from these Jewish Christians who are trying to get them to say, you have to have the law. And Jesus. And he says, well, let's talk about that law for a moment. Did you know what came before the law? The promise came before the law.

Like more than 400 years before there ever was a law, there was God coming and speaking to a man named Abraham and promising to him and to his child, not children, to his child, that he was going to do something profound. And if you were to go back and read Genesis chapters 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19, you would see this story of Abraham's life and God promising to bless him and to bless the world through him. And one of the ways that blessing was going to come was through his child. Now, in the immediate context of Genesis chapters 12 through 19, we think of Isaac, Abraham's son. But Paul says even then, even though Abraham was going to have a son and the blessing was going to perpetuate, God had in mind actually one child that was going to come in the future.

And that was his son, Jesus. And by the way, if you want to trace this, you could go to Matthew chapter one, you could read the genealogy account, and it takes us to see how everything traced to Jesus. But Paul is saying to these people who have heard this compelling argument from these Jewish Christians that no, you need the law. And Jesus, he says, no, no, no. Before there ever was a law, God made a promise.

And at the heart of that promise was Jesus. It was always Jesus plus nothing. And just in case they're not getting it, maybe they're a little thick headed. I can be thick headed. I don't know about you, but verses 17 and 18, this is what I'm trying to say.

The agreement God made with Abraham could not be canceled 430 years later. When God gave the law to Moses, he's like, listen, when God gave the law, it wasn't like promise 2.0.

God would be breaking his promise if that was the case. For if the inheritance could be received by keeping the Law, then it would not be the result of accepting God's promise. The promise came first. God graciously gave it to Abraham. So Paul's appealing to the very same story these people have been told.

He's saying, listen, they're emphasizing the Law. But there was something before the law, and it was called the Promise. And the promise was that God was going to, through Abraham and his child, bring real life to the world. The Law was never intended to bring life.

And that brings up a natural question like, so if the Law wasn't intended to bring life, what was the purpose of the law? And that's a question certainly that the Gentile Christians would have been asking. But if we're honest, it's probably a question that many of us ask at some point. We look in our Bibles and we see these books like Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and we're like, okay, if there's Jesus, why do I need all this? Why do I need the ten Commandments?

Why do I need these other commands? Well, Paul tells us the purpose of the law. Look at verse 19. He says, why then was the Law given? It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins.

One of the reason we have the law, these words, these teachings given to Moses, is because it reveals our sin. When you read in the commands to Moses, do not do this or do this and you will live. Immediately a light shines on your life, and you have to ask the question, well, am I doing the things he said to do, or am I doing the things he said not to do? And if I'm disobeying what he said to do, or I'm doing the things he said not to do, it reveals my brokenness and it reveals my sin. So the Law served a purpose in showing us our sin, but the Law's purpose was temporary.

Look at the end of verse 19. But the law was designed to last only until the coming of the child who is promised. The Law was always intended to be temporary. It showed us our sin, but it did something else. It acted as a guide, a tutor, a mentor for us.

The words that Paul uses in chapter 3, verses 24 and 25, and chapter 4, verses 1 through 3 or 4, he uses this term that the law was a guardian for us. It was given to us not just to show us our sin. On this temporary basis. It was given to us to guide, to mentor, to tutor us. So as we learn what God's heart is for how we live, then we can determine if we're going to do that or not.

It was to show us what God desires, even though it couldn't create the desire. See, the law served a purpose. God's promise was the primary conduit to be fulfilled in Jesus. But the law served a purpose within that. It helped carry the promise for a season.

But the law itself could never bring life. And so, as Paul speaks to these people who have heard this corrupted teaching and saying, listen, don't hold onto the law and Jesus. The law can't bring life. Only Jesus can bring life. He says as much in verse 22.

He says, but the Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin, so we receive God's promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ. He's just doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down. It's only been and ever been Jesus plus nothing else.

Paul in Second Corinthians, chapter one says something pretty compelling about how Jesus is the fulfillment of God's promises. Here's what he says. He says, for all of God's promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding yes. And through Christ, our Amen, which means yes, ascends to the to God for His glory. If you've been singing worship songs for a period of time, you may even recall a song that says that all of God's promises are yes and Amen.

When it comes to Jesus, he's the fulfillment of it. He's what was on God's mind when he spoke to ABRAHAM More than 2,000, 3,000 years before this moment that Paul's writing the Galatians again. When we look at Galatians, it's this picture of Paul just kind of circling and hitting the same thing, but just from different angles. But Paul does something different here that he hasn't done yet in our journey. He turns his attention in verse 26 of Galatians to some really practical implications of what happens when we find the fullness of our life in Jesus and nothing else.

And those implications are related to our identity and from our identity, relationships. Specifically relationships with other people and relationships with God. So I want to show you this. When we find our life in Jesus, it's Jesus plus nothing else. Something changes in us.

First is our identity how we view ourselves. Verses 26 through 28 are some of the most well known words in Paul's letters. Paul writes, for you are all children of God. Through faith in Christ Jesus, he gives us the picture of being a child. So when we're in Christ and when faith, we choose to follow him and surrender to him, we become his child.

That's a pretty cool picture. And he gives us a different picture. He says, and all who have been united with Christ in baptism, all of us in faith, have gone into the waters of baptism. We have put on Christ. We've put on Jesus, like putting on new clothes.

That's a different image. He's like, when in faith, through baptism, we choose to follow him. We saw baptism's first service live, saw it on the video of this service. We're saying we're declaring, like, what matters most about me now is Jesus. And here are the implications of that in the immediate context for the Galatians, verse 28.

There is no longer Jew or Gentile. Your primary identifier, he says, is no longer your race or your ethnicity. There's no longer slave or free. Your primary identifier is no longer your social class. There's no longer male or female.

Your primary identity is not your gender, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Can you imagine how revolutionary these words would have been if you find yourself as a gentile Christian in Galatia? You had all this excitement about following Jesus.

He was going to be the anchor of your story. And then for the last several months, you've heard these other people say, no, you need something else besides Jesus. And they come to you and they speak to you as though you're inferior because they have this Jewish heritage and you don't. When you hear Paul's words that when we are in Christ, there is no longer Jew or Gentile. There's freedom.

Like, it doesn't start by what you see in the mirror. It doesn't start with where you're from. It all comes back to who Jesus is. And so a Gentile could look at a Jew and they could be equals, because first and foremost, before they were ever a Jew and a Gentile, now they were in Christ because they've been clothed with him. And a slave and a free man didn't have to first relate to one another as slave and free, but rather as fellow followers of Jesus.

There's a whole letter about this in the New Testament. Paul writes a letter to a man named Philemon, and he tells him to treat a slave named Onesimus in a very special way. Because while Philemon was the master and Onesimus was the slave in Christ, their first identity was him. And everything else came later. It changed how they viewed their social class.

It changed things in the home. You likely know, if you've studied the world of Scripture, that women were seen as inferior in the Roman Empire. They had Very few rights.

So when Paul says there's no longer male or female, he's saying, listen, when you look across the table at home, the way a man relates to a woman and a woman to a man starts with who we are in Jesus. It's revolutionary for them. But can I just share with you that that's a traction point for us?

We live in a culture and a world that is adept at placing labels on us and telling us that our identity, who we are, the core from which we live, is rooted in who we love, what we feel, who we know, what we own, what we drive, the country of origin for us, our political affiliation, our citizenship status, our wealth, our fame. And if we're honest, so many times we're tempted to pull those labels on ourselves and find our identity in them. But when we are in Christ, there is now no Jew or gentile, slave or free, male or female, republican or democrat or libertarian, undocumented immigrant, citizen, Iranian, Israeli, black or white or brown.

There's something about when we choose to follow Jesus, that our chief identity is Him. And so he determines first and foremost who we are. He shapes our desires. He shapes what we do with our lives. And there's so much freedom in that.

Our identity in Christ should be breaking through barriers in relationships that our world can't seem to overcome.

So if you love Jesus and someone else does too, we should be able to fight through anything that could come between us, because first and foremost, our identity is at Him. Think about this. If you. If you are a business owner or a supervisor or a boss in the workplace, and you are a follower of Jesus, and you have people that work for you and under you who are also followers of Jesus, then in Christ you are called to treat them first and foremost as a fellow child of God rather than someone who reports directly to you. That changes things.

It changes the words that you share. It changes how you address conflict. It changes how you encourage them. Our identity in Christ should be our chief identity, and it's ours as we hold on to him and nothing else.

The implications are there for identity. And that just shapes, excuse me, how we treat other people. But it also shapes our relationship with God when our identity is Him. Look at what else Paul writes. This is Galatians, chapter 4, verses 5 through 7.

It says God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. God sent Jesus to buy freedom for us who were slaves so that God could adopt us as God's very own Children. And because we are his children, we are his. God sends the spirit of His Son into our hearts. The Holy Spirit comes to live and reign in us.

And he transforms us. He prompts us. He enables us to do something incredible, to call out and to cry out to God. Abba, Father. Abba is an Aramaic term that means dad.

It's an intimate and personal term. Do you get this? The creator of the universe enables us to call him dad. He loves you that much. You can look to Luke, chapter 15.

You can see the story of the prodigal son. And you don't have to relate to it as some distant story from some ancient day, but that's the story of God's heart and God's love for you. You have a place in his story, and you can relate to him intimately. Regardless of what your earthly relationship with your dad has been like, whether it's been good, great, or something you never want to repeat, the God of Heaven is a perfect father who invites you, as you find your identity in him, to relate to you, to relate to him as dad.

My hope would be that this week you would find some time to carve out some quiet. I don't know what quiet looks like for you. I know that if you've got young rascals running around, it looks very different. Maybe for you. Quiet Something in the early morning.

You set your alarm a little bit earlier. Maybe it's something late at night. Maybe it's a walk. Maybe it's having somebody that loves you come and take care of the kids for just a few minutes. You can get some time in silence.

I'd encourage you to reflect upon what it means that the God of all creation, the God who parts seas and walks upon waves, the God who makes blind men see and deaf men hear, the God who carves the Grand Canyon and places Mount Everest where it is, wants to relate to you intimately and personally and let that wash over you. This Father's Day week, I'd encourage you, if you're a disciple of Jesus, to. To find some time to intentionally tell yourself, like speak this to yourself, that my identity is first and foremost not in what I have, not in what I own, not in where I live, not in who I know, but it's in Jesus. There's this old song that played in my early youth ministry days by a band called Considering Lily. And they said, it's not the stuff that I've got.

It's. It's not the clothes that I wear. I know what I am not. I'm not These things, they're just things. I'm one of a kind, I'm totally new, and it's in Jesus that I find my everything.

They have this really cool verse in there where it says, you may have dyed your hair a shade that freaks your mother out. It may be green, but it looks clean. Did you try to rinse it out? You may grill meat at Burger King for your part time job. You may have your father's name.

That name may be Bob. You may have pierced your body parts one too many times or have a huge collection of those Japanese wind chimes. But none of those things determine your identity. It's only in Jesus that we find our identity. So would you remember that?

Would you remember that when you struggle? Would you remember that when you don't get the promotion, when you look at your home and you feel like you can't provide the things for your kids that you wanted to provide? Will you remember that when you're tempted to think that you're not much, you don't have much to offer? And will you remember that when you talk to other people and you're tempted to think that they're less than because of who they are and where they're from and what they do, that if they're in Jesus, you're on the same playing field? Family?

And will you listen for times this week when people say things that tell you they're finding their identity in something other than Jesus? And will you have the courage to gently and patiently take them on a journey to Galatians chapter three and tell them, listen, our identity is not in these things. It's in Him. It's Jesus and nothing else.

If you're not yet a follower of Jesus, here's my encouragement that you would consider that there is a God who loves you and made you and formed you and knows you. He sent his son to die for you so he could have a beautiful, personal, intimate relationship with you and help you find the life and hope and the meaning and the joy for which you desperately long. And we would like to help you experience that if we could help you take your next step this week, whether it's one of the things that I mentioned or something else. We invite you to text the word next to the number you see on the screen. We also invite you, if you're here in the room, to come forward.

And we'll have a few of our elders up at the front who are happy to listen to you and pray with you. We want to help you come to know this God who gives you your identity, and the process gives us our hope and life and joy. Let's pray. God, I thank you for just how you love us relentlessly, how you love us faithfully, how you give us an identity that can't be taken from us, that we can't lose or sell or just.

It's an identity, Father, that shapes the entirety of our lives. And I just pray that you would help us to place our faith in you and find that life. Help us help others find their life in you. Thank you for being a dad who's perfect in every way. It's in your name.

We pray and trust the name of Jesus. Amen. May you go and pray.